Reply to Virginia Haussegger

I wrote a reply to the article of Virginia Haussegger in Canberra Times (Time to undo the petty deal that's destroying women's lives, Feb 7, 2009) as a letter to the editor. Virginia wants Australia to lift ban on its funding for Family Planing/Abortion missions in Asia. Alas.. as usual, it was not published! Here is my letter.

To

The Editor
Canberra Times
ACT

Dear Sir/Madam,

Here I attach my response to Virginia Haussegger's article in Canberra TImes (Time to undo the petty deal that's destroying women's lives, Feb 7, 2009). Please publish it as a "letter to the editor".

Yours Truly,
Jaison Mulerikkal CMI
47 Lowe street
Quenbeyan, NSW - 2620

Email: jaisonmpaul@gmail.com
Mob: 0433893593

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I am a Catholic priest studying in Canberra from India - one of the so called "poor developing nations" in Asia. There is poverty in India, in Asia and we can slum it down at cinemas which is an Oscar stuff. No one debate about that. Poverty has to be addressed and we would welcome all men and women of good will to join us fighting it, because that is a humanitarian cause.

I felt it very sad and hypocritical to read an article by popular TV news reader and columnist Virginia Haussegger in Canberra TImes (Time to undo the petty deal that's destroying women's lives, Feb 7, 2009). The story of Meo Sot - a Burmese exile woman who jabbed her womb to force an abortion in Thailand "for she couldn't feed another hungry mouth" is really sorrowful. We need you to help Meo Sot and women like that. Our hearts and prayers are with Meo Sot. As it is clear from Virginia Haussegger's findings (and as far as I can read an Asian mind), Meo Sot would have been more than happy to bring her child up, if she had "enough to feed another hungry mouth". So, what the so called "developing nations" in Asia would want you to do is to assist us in eradicating the root cause of this social evil - poverty, which compels our women to take such unfortunate measures as described in Virginia Haussegger's article. We want you to take the shared moral responsibility of the dreadful social evil of poverty and put sufficiently enough money to eradicate poverty in Asia. As many NGOs noted in the World Economic Forum, if the so called "developed nations" had set apart a small portion of trillions of dollars of " stimulus packages" for poverty eradication, we could easily eradicate poverty in Asia (and around the world) and its negative outcomes.

That's what we expect Australia to do - to help "feed another hungry mouth" of Meo Sot. Let you keep at least 10% of the 42 billion stimulus package to eradicate poverty from Asia and help women like Meo Sot (and children and men) to come out of poverty so that terrible things can be avoided in our lives. I wish Virginia championed that issue to convince Australians to put 10% of "handouts and stimulus packages" to poverty eradication to help Meo Sot "to feed another mouth". But, if you can't do that don't preach us to kill our children. Virginia is not Mother Theresa. But we would welcome Mother Theresas into our lands who can take care of our women and children not Virginias who preach our mothers to kill our children. And Australian aid should only be set-apart to eradicate poverty which is the root cause of most evils and not to kill our children.